Armstrong presents petition to end long-gun registry

TRURO - A petition against the long-gun registry with more than 3,000 names, the majority from central and northern Nova Scotia, was presented Tuesday in the House of Commons.

“There’s a lot of support in our riding to eliminate the long-gun registry,” Cumberland Colchester Musquodoboit Valley MP Scott Armstrong said after presenting the petition.

The issue became crystal clear to the rookie politician as he canvassed the vastly rural riding during last fall’s byelection campaign.

“I was actually shocked by the amount of people that brought that to my attention. It was probably the issue at the time that I heard the most about,” he recalled. “It was toxically spoken about at the rural doorstep.”

After being elected Armstrong decided to send out a survey regarding the gun registry to hear more from the people he represented. The response was overwhelmingly in favour of abolishing the registry with only 10 per cent of the 2,000 returned surveys for maintaining the registry or had no opinion.

The Conservative MP then sent out about 250 petitions and in six weeks 3,000 people had signed it and the names were certified. He said some names were from other provinces but the “vast majority” were from Cumberland-Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley.

The petition was presented in support of Conservative MP Candice Hoeppner’s private member’s bill to end the long-gun registry. Armstrong said some western MPs have felt isolated during the discussion around the issue but his petition shows there is support from the East Coast as well.

“This is not a western issue, it’s a rural Canadian issue,” he said. “This has shown there’s very, very strong support for her bill, not only in the

western provinces, but in the East Coast as well.”

The private member’s bill is currently before the standing committee on public safety. It has to come back to the house for a final vote and

Armstrong hopes that takes place before the end of the spring session, which is schedule to end on June 23.